Works in progress: Jack Clark on drugs

Sign, San Ignacio, Belize.

     Turns out Jack Clark and I have more in common than I thought. Back in the day, we both took a dim view of drugs. He favored beer. To me, beer was a temperance beverage; make mine Jack-on-the-rocks. That was enough.

     Like him, my stumbling block was that if I bought drugs, then I'd be a person buying drugs, and that struck me as loathsome. So while I'd partake for free, now and then, I didn't particularly like the effects, and never sought it out. Thank heaven for small favors.

     Anyway, I'm taking up space that should go to EGD's favorite pinch hitter, with a memory of the altered life. Take it away, Jack:

     I’m probably one of the last guys who should be writing about cocaine. I tried it once — or who knows? Maybe two or three times. But the night of the Super Bowl is the only time that stays in memory, that night, and the morning after.
     When cocaine came on the scene at the Lincoln Park bar where I was hanging out in the ‘70s, I’d already heard how expensive it was, so I was too cheap to even give it a try. What if I ended up liking it? I was a domestic beer drinker. That was my price level. Every so often, I’d splurge and get a bourbon on the rocks. I would never do shots of anything. I could go out with $20, drink the night away, feed the jukebox, leave a reasonable tip, flag a taxi, and still have enough left to pick up a morning newspaper on the way home.
     When people would say, “You want to take a walk around the block?” That was shorthand for Let’s go smoke a joint. I usually shook my head unless it was a pretty girl, and then I’d take the walk just to keep her company. I wouldn’t partake or at least not much. I liked that simple beer buzz so much better.
     The first time someone invited me to meet them in the washroom, I didn’t get it at all.
     My friend must have seen my confused look. He opened his hand to show me the vial in his palm. “A little blow?” he said.
     “Thanks,” I said. “But no.”
     Before long, I seemed to be in the minority. At least, in this particular bar. On my birthday in 1979, Harry invited me to the washroom. I shook my head. “I don’t do that stuff.”
     “Yeah. But it’s your birthday.”
     A few weeks later on New Year’s Day, he tried again. “I already told you, I don’t do that stuff,” I said.
     “But it’s the ‘80s now,” he said and predicted the flavor of the new era.
     Some call the ‘80s the decade of decadence but where I hung out it was definitely the cocaine decade. It started with the thought that this was not an addictive drug and ended with the realization that if you used it frequently, when you stopped, you found yourself depressed for no apparent reason.
     I believe, given enough time and a large enough grant, I could figure out the missing link.
     Before the ‘80s were over, Harry had lost his business, home, and marriage. But he never lost his sense of humor. When I reminded him about what he’d said on the first day of the decade, he didn’t remember saying it, but he was proud of himself and found it quite amusing.
     I was in my own little bubble half the time and didn’t really pay much attention to what was going on around me. I’d stopped listening to the radio around the time of Grand Funk Railroad. But I didn’t mind pumping quarters into the jukebox and getting lost in the music. Three plays for a quarter or seven for a half dollar. That seemed pretty reasonable compared to what some of my friends were spending to keep themselves amused.
     A good bar is like a decent church. It needs music, lighting, comfortable seats, an interesting congregation, and something to drink. Oh, and a religion, of course. I decided that my druggy friends thought they were outlaws. That was their religion. All that sneaking around, whispering, money changing hands or being tightly rolled, those were their rites.
     But what was I doing there? That’s probably a question that anyone who’s spent too much time in a saloon asks.
     It was a comfortable room. Everyone looks better under amber bar lights. The jukebox was great. I don’t remember most of the songs anymore and they changed records regularly, which is one sign of a good box. It was the first place I ever heard Merle Haggard’s "Rambling Fever." The B side was his great rendition of "When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again.' Mink DeVille's, "Just to Walk That Little Girl Home," was another favorite. The opening line: “It’s closing time in this nowhere café.”
     It’s a great song but it doesn’t explain what I was doing in a bar where I was becoming an outsider. I was there for the moments when it all came together, the light and the music. The buzz. If you could just hold it there, right there, you might finally understand something important. This feels so good, you think. This is how it should always be. I almost feel normal.
     It never holds, of course. The room tilts, the lights get too bright, someone’s playing mediocre songs on the jukebox, it all slips away, and you’re back to being you.
     The mix of clientele at the bar reminded me of the West Side block where I’d grown up. There were doctors, lawyers, truck drivers, cops, mechanics, salesmen, waiters and waitresses, carpenters, janitors, and everything in between. A wannabe writer, moving furniture to pay the bills, fit right in. People talked about books, music, politics, anything you could think of. There were always new, interesting people stopping by.
     As the years went on, much of that diversity went away and it became, more and more, a cocaine bar. Some of the old regulars disappeared, others rarely came in. The level of the conversations dropped considerably (along with my IQ, I’ve always figured). Often, they weren’t conversations at all but a series of monologues. It was no longer a very inviting place for new people. "What’s he doing here?" was the typical feeling. Is he a narc?
     I didn’t do cocaine but I found myself being suspicious of strangers all the same. It was no longer such a comfortable place.
     One night one of my non-druggy friends invited me to the washroom. “Oh, don’t tell me you’re buying that stuff now.” I’d always thought he was a fairly intelligent guy.
     “You know, if you don’t buy now and then,” he’d said, in a very serious tone, and changed my opinion with a single sentence, “people stop inviting you in.”
     I started to expand my horizons. But if I was out and about, I’d sometimes try to make it to my old home for one last drink at closing time. One bartender liked to joke that she laid out milk and cookies for me.
     One year, I came in on Super Bowl night. I hadn’t seen the game or heard the score. “Who won the Super Bowl?” I asked.
      “Bruce and Gary,” the milk-and-cookies bartender said. These were two regulars. (I’ve changed names here to protect the living and the dead.)
     “No really?” I said.
     “Really,” she said. “Hang around. They’ll be back.”
     It wasn’t long before they were back with a cast of thousands. Well, maybe it was only twenty. I finally found out the answer to my question. Bruce and Gary had won the Super Bowl. They’d gone to some high-end bar for a big-time Super Bowl party. They’d split a $1,000 square, putting up $500 each. With 100 squares on the grid that meant the total pool was $100,000. I don’t remember how the payout worked but they’d ended up winning two of the four quarters and walked away with something like $37,000 and a TV.
     So I joined the hangers-on as we went from one late-night bar to another. I refused all invitations to the toilet but was happy to take free drinks when they were offered.
     We eventually ended up in someone’s living room, all sitting around a huge coffee table with a pile of cocaine in the middle. To me, it looked like someone had upended a 2-pound bag of flour.
      Oh, what the hell? I thought. This was a special occasion, which meant I wouldn’t have to feel guilty for never offering them some of mine.
     At dawn, there weren’t that many of us left, so I finally got to do a bit of talking. But every time I said something, a guy I didn’t know very well said, “That’s a given, Jack.”
     I’d always heard that cocaine made you feel smart. It was having the opposite effect on me.
     After a while, I’d had enough, not of the cocaine but of that guy. I left the survivors still around the coffee table. The sun had been up for a while when I made the long walk home. It was a pleasant spring-like morning and all the birds were singing the same damn song: “That’s a given, Jack. That’s a given.”
     Later, as I recounted the night to a friend, I said I’d never felt so stupid.
     “Oh, you idiot, don’t pay any attention to him,” she’d said. “He says that to everyone.”
      I probably should have thanked him. If nothing else, it had cured me of any further interest in the drug. All these years later, I don’t remember his name or even what he looked like. But I still hear those birds now and then.